Widow in Acatenango

A new friend of mine named Paul came to me asking about our house design. He wants to build homes for the poor and wanted to see how we might be able to help. I showed him our prototype home that was constructed in the backyard of the office in the very beginning. We were taking down the prototype and he asked what would be done with it. The timing couldn't have been better. He told me of a widow in Acatenango who needed a home.
He wanted to see both the steel stud design and the electropanel design so he accompanied us on the trip to Iztapa (see previous post) and he and I went to Paraxaj, a village near Acatenango, to reconstruct the prototype home there with some modifications. Paraxaj is in the middle of a coffee farm where most of the villagers work.

When I first arrived and saw where the widow was living with her 4 children I was reminder of the necessity of this project. She was living in a mud home wrapped in barbed wire that was the size of a bathroom. The house we were building would be split and shared among her family. She would live in one half with her children and her other family would live in the other side, like a duplex. Imagine if a shared 320 square feet home (160 sf each family) would work for your family let alone bee seen as luxury. Often I am confrinted with the difference between what I say I need and what I actually need. God has been soo gracious to my family.